Book review: The Space Between

swiped from bakeracademic.comEric O. Jacobsen, The Space Between: A Christian Engagement with the Built Environment (Baker Academic, 2012), 297 pp.If Jesus's "dwelling among us" means that he lives as we typically do, he would most likely be living in a subdivision at least a few miles from where he might interact with people in a quasi public setting--like a shopping mall or a grocery store. In this case, Jesus would need to own and operate some kind of automobile simply to have the kind of diverse interaction with people that we see him having in the Gospels... Rather than asking, "What would Jesus drive?" I want to ask, "Why must Jesus drive?" (Jacobsen 2012, pp. 207-208)(6/18/2026) I first read Eric O. Jacobsen's The Space Between in 2015, after hearing him interviewed by Chuck Marohn on the Strong Towns podcast. (That interview is here, and a subsequent appearance is here.) Dr. Jacobsen, who has been senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church (ECO) in Tacoma, Washington, since…